Michelle Obama: 'a whole lot of not-truth telling' in Washington

12/14/12 12:13 PM EST

First lady Michelle Obama called in to Tom Joyner's radio show to thank him and his listeners for helping to reelect her husband and to urge them to continue fighting for his policies and not be distracted by the Beltway back-and-forth.

"[P]eople have to stay focused on what’s going on because it’s easy to get confused in all the back and forth that goes on," she said, according to a transcript. "And that’s a whole lot of not-truth-telling that happens, if you know what I mean. So we have a solid victory under our belt, but we are nowhere near finished."

Joyner told the first lady that his team fielded thousands of phone calls in the months before the election and doled out information on voter registration, where to vote, and how to vote early.

"[O]ne of the many reasons I’m calling is to thank you all personally, because the hotline — just the tenacity, the everyday focus on issues, calling stuff out, making it funny but still being on point — I mean, that makes a huge difference of just keeping people focused," Obama said. "And your voices are so important... And you just have to keep being there, because the battles are not over. That’s just really the important thing to continue to stress, that we cannot do what we did in 2008, which is vote and then go back to sleep — because the real work is coming up."